Esquire.com's everything guide to the best liquor you never spend much time thinking about. Because when you do, some very good things can happen.By Leslie Pariseau

A Few Words on Rum

A Few Words on Rum

Like a strenuous curling match, or Joe Biden giving a speech on national security, rum is often not taken as seriously as it should be. Of course, this dismissive attitude has much to do with the outmoded image of dashboard hula dancers, swimming pool-sized daiquiris, and college blunders involving a handle of Bacardi and root beer. (Elmore Leonard might also be to blame.) But revisited, rum is a truly American spirit: roguish, rascally, and surprisingly complex. It can be sipped, it can be mixed, or it can be dumped into a punch bowl. Herein, a comprehensive guide to how it's done — the right way.

Leslie Pariseau is a journalist living in New York City. She is fond of Muppets, pie, eavesdropping, and mezcal margaritas. You can find more of her work at lesliepariseau.tumblr.com.

What It Is (and Where It Comes From)

What It Is (and Where It Comes From)

In his treatise And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, Wayne Curtis sums up the spirit's carefree approach: "Rum embodies America's laissez-faire attitude. It is whatever it wants to be." Simply, if it's made from sugarcane or a byproduct like molasses, it's called rum. As for its origins, early distillers weren't always the best record keepers, but it's surmised that somewhere in the Caribbean (probably Barbados) the first heady dram was conceived. Today it's produced everywhere from Panama and Trinidad to Alameda, California and Puerto Rico and exported just about everywhere else.